Almost time to travel

It's been a pretty low key several days.  Cool mornings and evenings, pleasantly warm days.  We had thunder and lightning just before light today and I realized that I haven't heard a lot of thunder here.  When it rains, it usually just rains.

I got a text just before 5 last night from my friend, Sergei, asking if I wanted to meet for beer and light supper.  I had just about enough time to walk to our usual meeting place at Metro Khreshchatek.  Instead of going to Shato, which I'm not really fond of because of all the people smoking, we walked up to International Plaza and went to Sunduk.  It wasn't crowded.  We caught up on what we've been doing and it was good to see Sergei relax after a hard day at work.  We ate a Ukrainian specialty.  You probably wouldn't like it.  Quite greasy potato pancakes, topped with fried onions and pieces of pork fat, with sour cream.  I'm almost hesitant to say that I like it a lot.  In the States, I would never eat pieces of fat; in fact, I always trim every piece of visible fat of of meat.  Here it tastes good to me.  Not sure how my arteries feel about it.

I hear that the foliage is approaching peak at home.  We don't much have obvious change of season in Kiev, except for temperature changes and more rain.

It's kind of a tense day among the LGBT community here.  Bill 8711 (which bans "gay propaganda" but which really is just homophobia enshrined into law) will be voted by the Parliament today.  Unless some ploy can defer it, we expect it to be voted into law.

Tomorrow I fly to Moscow.  I have so much cold war propaganda stuck in my head from growing up.  It's temporarily interfering with my pleasure in going to a remarkable city and seeing good friends.

Hope everyone is well.